Pokemon Max Revive: The Origins of Love
by GaliCat
Summary: AU rewrite of "Training Daze". When Jessie and James are paired together as Rocket-Dan trainees, it's revealed that they've already met... under less than favorable terms. Can they learn to put their differences aside and become a team? Shipping within.
1. Training Daze

Author's Note: As you'll see, my PMR storyline makes a few changes – that's the point of a "reboot" to any franchise, after all – but some may need a little explaining beforehand. Viper, while an official "character-of-the-day" from the real Training Daze episode, has been transformed into a Seviper Pokemorph (and, incidentally, a bit of a troll; Bulbapedia didn't give me much on his personality or even if he had any, so I went with what worked), stemming from the logic that if Team Rocket (I'm using the Japanese name Rocket-Dan because I like the sound of it better) was dealing with genetic experimentation, surely they would have attempted to "enhance" their own employees to become more powerful, thus the transformation of certain canon Rocket members into Pokemorphs for the purposes of this story. Also, the reason for Jessie and James leaving the bike gang (and each other) is shown, but be forewarned – it's not pretty (in fact, it's the main reason this fic is rated T; like Beast TRio, I originally wanted this one to be K+, but that's not how it worked out at all).

Why the name Max Revive? Because this is my take on a "max revive" of the Pokemon franchise. And, yes, this means we'll be seeing a lot of Ash down the road, but I'm starting with Rocket-Dan because A. Team Rocket fanfics are what I do, and B. I'm planning on going in roughly chronological order, so showing how Rocket-Dan got together takes priority before Ash starting his Pokemon journey. This means we'll also see hints of Mewtwo's creation throughout the full run of the first "season" (not sure how many "seasons" there will actually BE, though – it depends on how many projects I can juggle at a time). Expect a few twists and turns along the road, including the plot going in directions that, rather from what happened canonically, are what I WISH had happened. One of these plot twists happens at the end of this episode (which will be posted in several chapters) and, without spoiling too much, ties into something I already mentioned above. Happy waiting!

**Pokemon Max Revive**

**Episode 001: Training Daze**

**Mt. Silver, just outside Rocket-Dan Academy – evening**

Fifteen-year-old Jessie stared in shock at her drill instructor, a lithe, long-tailed, and legless Seviper Pokemorph appropriately titled Viper. She didn't dare stare at the person Viper was pointing to; at that moment, she didn't even want to acknowledge the perfectly normal-looking human male, who was her own age, had straight bluish-lavender hair cut to about chin length, and was leaning against a wall and evidently wishing that a nearby ground-type Pokemon would be kind enough to just use Earthquake and swallow him up, never to return.

And she especially didn't want to think about the words Viper had just said: "Jessica Musashi, this is your new partner, Jameson Kojiro. I recommend you get to know him; you'll be running an agility and endurance course together tomorrow, and after that-"

"We've MET," Jessie snapped. "And he certainly does NOT want me to 'get to know him,' at least not in ONE sense of the word."

James really did sink to the ground at that one. "Oh, will you let that GO already, Jess?" he moaned, covering his face with his hands. "Aren't you supposed to be with the bike gang back in-"

"I got thrown OUT of the bike gang, thanks to YOU," Jessie hissed. "If you'd just been man enough to-"

"Oh, is THAT what you think manhood is about?" James apparently thought this one was worth getting off the ground for, because moments later, he was practically in Jessie's face. "If that's the case I may as well renounce my gender and put on a dress!"

"I wouldn't be surprised if you did!"

"ENOUGH!" yelled Viper, slamming his mighty tail to the ground and causing what felt like an actual battle-worthy Earthquake. "As I was SAYING, you'll be running an agility and endurance course tomorrow, and if you pass THAT, I'll have more training assignments. But I'm warning you, Jameson; you'd better pass. Jessie here has had to put up with twelve failed partners in a row, and since obviously she's taken a dislike to you, you'll have to be careful not to make yourself unlucky number thirteen."

James glared at Jessie, then at Viper. "I'm not interested in hearing about Jessie's failed partners," he taunted. "She probably just scared them all off with her feminine wiles."

Jessie clenched her fists and bared her teeth. "Well, if THAT'S what you think, don't come crying to ME to carry you through the rest of the training, Jame-SON!"

"No one's carried me since my momma, thank you very much!"

"Oh really? It wasn't your momma that pulled you and your sleeping bag out of the river when-"

"It wasn't my momma that threw me IN, either!"

"Well, I wouldn't have thrown you in if YOU hadn't-"

"So it's MY fault now, is it? YOU started-"

"ENOUGH!" Viper yelled, slamming his tail down again, this time between the two bickering trainees. "I'll throw you BOTH in the river if you don't stop trying to eat each other alive – and the river's several miles down the mountain, and I sure don't intend to SLITHER you two down there. You're partners and that's that! Now, since you're obviously not going to make pleasant conversation, you may report to your respective dorms immediately. I need you up and running no later than four AM for the test; don't give me those Deerling eyes, Jameson, it'll be good for you. Now scatter!"

James stuck out his tongue at Jessie, who retaliated with her finger. Then Viper stuck out his tail and tripped them both, sending them sprawling on top of each other in an extremely awkward position.

James jumped off of Jessie like she was made of hot lava that would melt his flesh off in seconds. Jessie, for her part, merely smirked. James quickly shot her a look, then took off running into the darkness towards the male dormitory, shouting something that sounded a lot like "Unclean! Unclean!" Jessie grimaced at Viper, then stalked off to her own dorm, looking the very picture of wounded dignity.

Viper snickered to himself. He was SO looking forward to watching those two work the obstacle course the next morning. If nothing else, it would likely prove an entertaining vocabulary lesson.

* * *

Next chapter: When faced with the results of their agility and endurance test, the ugly truth of Jessie and James' past comes out... but how will it affect their chances of being accepted into Rocket-Dan? As they come face-to-face with Giovanni for the first time under less-than-pleasurable circumstances, they get assigned a "supervisor" that may be more trouble than he's worth...

Author's note: If you want your character to receive a CAMEO later on in this fic as a Team Rocket trainee or member, please let me know! (Though you're not guaranteed to make it in...)


	2. Young and Stupid

Author's Note: Not sure if Giovanni is "in character" or not, but I find angry evil bosses to be much more humorous than stoic evil bosses. Besides, this is a remake, and I can mess with characters' personalities if I want to, right? Though, really, I don't want to do that TOO much, especially with main characters – the story needs to still be recognizable. I think Giovanni is just barely mundane enough that I can get creative with him, since I'm not so sure if he even HAS an actual personality besides being the "Big Bad Boss." So, I sincerely apologize if I'm stepping on anyone's hooves (oops, FEET; I've obviously been on My Little Brony reading pony memes for far too long while I should have been fanfic-ing). Oh, and Giovanni MIGHT be a Pokemorph himself, but then again, he might not – as with the early anime, I'm keeping his appearance shrouded in mystery.

In case anyone is wondering, the meaning of the name "Rocket-Dan" will be revealed all in good time. Hint: it's an acronym. Better hint: it's not that horrible nonsense acronym that Pokemon Adventures cruelly bestowed upon us. ("Evil Tusks"? Really?) No, I'm making this acronym up all by myself. Already have, actually. Waiting for when I can fit it into the actual STORY; don't want to be the one that explains everything in the author's notes, because I see that as lazy. (No offense meant to those that do it.)

Speaking of cameos, Fizzy Starburst requested a form to fill out for OC submissions, so I came up with one that will be posted at the end of this chapter, right after the next-chapter teaser. I really wanted to put it BEFORE the next-chapter teaser for stylistic purposes, but I put in at the very bottom so (hopefully) it would be a lot easier to copy/paste without having to worry about missing part of it.

Warning: This fic contains a frank discussion of hormonal teenage stupidity that some may find offensive. In other words, shipping. (Yes, I noticed some of you have already gotten the hint – Fizzy Starburst, for one.) And if you think this instance is bad, you probably won't want to stick around for chapter three, in which we discover a Pokemon with a (heterosexual) crush on a human being... but don't worry, that doesn't end in anything "happening," just... awkwardness. (Some may be able to guess where I'm going with this hint; others may not. But it's based on something actually IN the anime, so happy guessing...)

On the question of if James is gay (asked by supersexyghotmew95), my answer is: it's never been officially stated one way or the other, and my view is that he isn't, but he clearly has no qualms in behaving in a FASHION (pun intended) that might make someone think he was, perhaps in hopes of warding off the fairer sex (specifically, Jessiebelle). He does seem a bit put off by women... I blame Jessiebelle for that. So in my opinion, at this point in his life, James is perfectly happy to consider himself asexual. I personally choose not to cover homosexuality in my stories because doing so is just a big can of worms that could only hurt those on all sides of the issue.

Oh, and this is a songfic; it's got a Toby Mac soundtrack. If you have his CD "Tonight," I highly recommend you use it while reading this story. If not, do yourself a favor and buy one.

**Episode 001 pt 2: Young and Stupid**

**Rocket-Dan Academy – Outdoor Agility Course, 4:39 AM**

When Jessie and James finally reached the end of the obstacle course, Viper was there waiting for them, an unreadable expression on his serpentine face. "Excellent work, Jameson; I'm impressed with your tenacity. A lesser trainee would have given up after falling into half a dozen pits..." Viper glared harshly at Jessie. "...or being PUSHED INTO THEM."

"You think I pushed him in on PURPOSE?" Jessie yelped, pretending to be innocent. "It's far too dark out here to see clearly; I couldn't AVOID running into him!"

"Maybe HUMAN eyes can't see so clearly," Viper scolded, "but Seviper morphs such as myself can see a good deal more than you might think. Such as that self-satisfied smirk on your face when you kept ramming yourself against Jameson... while perfectly avoiding the pit traps yourself as you knocked HIM into them."

"Coincidence," Jessie lied. "I was just proud of myself for obviously being the superior athlete, and anyway, I was too focused on avoiding the pits to even THINK about where James was during the test! It's a miracle HE didn't knock ME in!" She glanced at James, who was clearly trying to avoid her gaze; after what had happened the night before, he still wished that the earth would swallow him up, preferably taking Jessie with him.

"Quit rationalizing, Musashi; you're wasting your breath," snapped Viper. Jessie knew from experience that when her drill instructor started referring to someone by their last name only, they were surely in trouble. This was clearly no exception. "I've been looking over the Red Team recruits' files, and out of all of them, you're the only one who's gotten anywhere near close enough to register as competent... at the expense of your own teammates, I might add."

"WHAT?"

"Oh, don't play innocent, missy. I've seen everything. You're so bent on getting ahead, you're willing to take down anybody who stands in your way, including your assigned partners. I could name a few examples, but Jameson here has taken enough abuse from you already; there's no need to scare him into running like a Rapidash."

"Hey!" James protested. "I've NEVER run away in my life, and I'm sure not starting now!"

"Oh, REALLY?" Jessie snapped, whirling around to face James. "Then what do you call what you did after the sleeping bag incident? Explain THAT!"

**(Start song: Hey Devil, track 9 on Toby Mac's "Tonight")**

James glared daggers at Jessie, who glared poisoned daggers back. Finally, James spoke in an oddly even tone, clearly putting all his effort into not blowing up:

"Speaking on that subject, I looked up the company guidelines last night, and guess what? In Rocket-Dan, sexual harassment is punishable by NEUTERING."

There was a horrible, deadly silence, followed by a horrible, deadly shouting.

"I'm going to STRANGLE you, you stinking b-d!" Jessie yelled, lunging at James. "You called THAT 'harassment'? You wouldn't even let me TOUCH you! And there I thought we'd committed!"

"By dating for, what, three weeks? We were THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, you slut!"

"I was FOURTEEN, you self-righteous prude!" yelled Jessie, struggling against Viper's long, heavy tail, which had wrapped her tightly enough in its grasp to save James' neck from being wrung clean off. "Every other boy I've ever dated was willing to give me what I wanted!"

"Well, every other boy ran out on you after they'd gotten what THEY wanted from YOU! How's THAT, Ms. FOURTEEN?"

Jessie refused to admit that James had absolutely every right to be appalled at her over this. "You boys are all the same! Terrified of commitment!" she yelled, trying to rationalize herself.

James couldn't believe his own nerve, telling Jessie off. He figured that since she was probably going to kill him anyway, he might as well go out having the last word. "At least I WANT commitment! And maybe YOU should get 'committed,' because I just told you I'm not LIKE those other boys! And if you can't like me for who I am," James continued, raising his voice to an unnaturally high pitch for his gender, "then why should I try to become just like everybody else for you when THEY'VE all let you down as well? I thought I LOVED you back then, but now you DISGUST me!"

"Whoa, WHOA! Is THAT what this is about?" Viper demanded. "An adolescent romance scandal? Musashi, WHAT exactly happened between you and Jameson previously?"

Jessie narrowed her eyes. "Oh, he just sealed himself shut in his sleeping bag because he wanted to 'protect' his precious virginity – I was only TEASING him, after I found out he wasn't interested-"

"And then she threw my sleeping bag into the RIVER and almost drowned me!" James finished for Jessie, glaring icy poisoned daggers at her.

"Well, how was I supposed to know the zipper jammed?"

"It wasn't jammed, I was holding it shut!"

"And you didn't think to let go of it when you started to DROWN, did you?"

"I was more scared of YOU than I was of the water!"

Viper groaned to himself. Forget the vocabulary lesson; now he was getting far too close to receiving a BIOLOGY lesson. He was going to have to go straight to the boss with this one.

* * *

**Rocket-Dan Academy Headmaster's Office, 5:02 AM**

Giovanni sat at his desk, absentmindedly petting his Persian and waiting for his latest and most promising "trainee" to fetch him coffee (at five in the morning, no less; Giovanni believed in being an early riser, thus the strenuous schedules of new Rocket-Dan trainees), when Viper slithered in holding Jessie, James dashed past them both with a hysterical expression on his face, and all Hell broke loose.

After being forced to listen to all three sides of the story AT THE SAME TIME, Giovanni came to an important realization: he needed that coffee sooner than he'd thought he would, because he just had to have something to throw at the lot of them. Instead, he took a few deep breaths, patted his Persian a bit, and only then did he completely lose his temper.

"You called these two in here just to tell me that the woman keeps knocking the guy into pits on the agility course?"

To say that James was absolutely appalled would have been the understatement of the millennium. "That wasn't the point at ALL! We were talking about-"

"What happened between you and Jessie BEFORE you signed up for Rocket-Dan is of no consequence to me," Giovanni snarled, keeping his voice as even as possible, which wasn't as much as he would have liked but was still significantly better than if he hadn't tried at all, in which case Jessie and James would have been flying straight through the walls by that point. "You two are teammates, you were assigned to be teammates before ANY of us heard about your little scandal, and doggone it, you two are going to STAY teammates even if it kills you. And for Arceus' sake," (his tone got darker) "after what you've just put me through in the last five minutes, I hope it does."

"Trust me, it will," Jessie muttered under her breath, glaring at James.

James had evidently come to the same conclusion; once again, he was staring at the floor and hoping it would swallow him up into oblivion before Jessie turned around and did that herself. Viper was still restraining her, but only by the arm; one good wrench and James was sure that Jessie could break free, then break HIM. To be honest, James (as a virgin) still didn't understand what Jessie's big deal about this whole thing was, unless it was being kicked out of the bike gang, which James didn't even understand. Then again, he'd ditched the bike gang right after his discovery that Jessie was The Woman His Mother Warned Him About.

"However, MUSASHI," Giovanni continued, winding down a tad bit, "I cannot ignore your injuring your own partner half a dozen times or so on the agility course. From now on, you two are going to have to be more closely supervised for Kojiro's safety, and your supervisor will report directly to me via intercom should ANYTHING go wrong." He glared past the open door behind them, wondering if that dang-blasted trainee was ever going to show up with that coffee. Were those footsteps he heard, or pawsteps? "Ironically, I was about to call you two in anyway to assign you your partner Pokemon, which means I can now kill two heads on one Doduo."

Jessie snorted. "Oh, with what? You're going to assign us a talking Chatot?"

There was a sudden crash in the hallway behind them, followed by an immediate blast of electricity coupled with the shattering of glass. James jumped back from the open doorway, and Viper swiftly slithered backwards, still holding Jessie by the arm (tripping her up, no less, which was actually completely unintentional this time around). At the exact moment of the electric blast, a loud, unearthly screech burst through the hallway, sounding very much like a cat being electrocuted, which was very nearly what it was. A swear word followed in a similar voice, and without further warning, a wet empty bucket rolled into Giovanni's office, followed by an extremely disheveled, soaking wet, and thoroughly toasted creature that might have been a Meowth walking on its hind legs. It had soapsuds and coffee in its fur (which was all standing on end), its charm was missing, and it was holding a broken coffee cup that seemed to be half-full of a mixture of coffee and mop water.

"Gotcha coffee, Boss," said the thing that resembled both a Meowth and a walking disaster. "Um, ya gotta watch where ya put dem mop buckets, jus' so ya know. Not so close ta dem lights, ya dig?"

Viper took the cup from the unfortunate one, plucked out a coffee-coated amulet coin, and wordlessly handed it to the victim, who licked it clean with its sandpaper tongue and gingerly placed it back on its head. The Seviper morph then handed the cup to Giovanni, who gave it a distasteful look and placed it on the far corner of his desk. Then, strange to say, the boss actually smiled, although his smile could have curdled MooMoo milk.

"The Doduo is officially dead."

"Great," Meowth muttered, not knowing what the conversation was about or what the two human trainees suddenly seemed so horrified about. "Save sum fo' me, cuz Oi'm starvin'."

* * *

Author's Note: Whoa, Jessie, just... WHOA. You're waaaaaaay too young for that sort of drama. I almost felt guilty just writing this, but this is how Jessie IS in my mind. To me, James is a virgin by choice; after the Jessiebelle incident, I almost believe that he considers himself asexual, except for the fact that by his own admission he's placed multiple personals ads (referenced in the third movie in a quite funny comment that I can't reproduce here because I've already spoiled the punchline).

Next chapter: Setting out on their next training exercise for Rocket-Dan with their new supervisor Meowth, who will break down first, Jessie or James? Will Meowth be able to deal with them both? And which other Pokemon will the human trainees bring with them on their journey?

Am I forgetting something? Ah, yes! The form for submitting OC's... Here we go!

Name of Team Rocket member/trainee:

Age:

Gender:

Appearance (includes type of Pokemorph, if any):

Personality (likes/dislikes, character traits, and so on):

Reason for signing up for Rocket-Dan:

Pokemon (up to six; provide information on each one such as gender, moveset, personality, and ability):

Anything else you'd like me to know:


	3. RocketDan Company Policy

Author's Notes:

Pokemypoke, you should know that I kind of balk at lengthly reviews because I don't know what to make of them. Yes, I have problems understanding how social situations work – I'm autistic. And I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty – I'm saying it because it's the truth. So if my writing feels off on some social area, it's because I have very little social skills myself and am playing by ear.

Since you seem to not like long author's notes, I'd rather not waste mine on responding to all of your opinions in order. In the meanwhile, remember that while I appreciate greatly your willingness to spend so much time helping me grow as a writer, the chapter will remain as-is (at least until the story is finished; I may re-write the whole thing when I'm done with it as an exercise to help me improve my writing), because if I rewrote a chapter every time I got a lengthy review like yours, I'd never get any new chapters posted, and I happen to be working on FIVE Pokemon stories at this time, plus various other projects not related to Pokemon. However, since you brought up some valid points (along with some not-so-valid ones; the formatting bits and inclusion of Pokemorphs are more a matter of personal taste, and I semi-censor swear words because while I admit the characters said them, I don't want to encourage people to repeat them), I've decided to add an extra bit in this story just for you – a conversation between Viper and Giovanni on how the situation with Jessie and James was handled. Expect violence.

Fizzy Starburst, you're not the only one who saw Jessie's personality as spot-on – one of the few things Pokemypoke totally approved of in chapter two was Jessie's characterization. (Might I add to Pokemypoke that at least SOMEONE thought my dialogue was perfect!)

**Episode 001 pt 3: Rocket-Dan Company Policy**

**Headmaster's Office – 7:25 AM**

When Giovanni had Viper go over the videos of Jessie and James' obstacle course run with him, something at the very end seemed to stand out – not the actual course running, but what they heard during the spat afterwards. And what they didn't hear.

"Viper." Giovanni's voice was clear and stern. "Did you honestly just sit back and watch these two kids throw their little hissy fit for THAT long?"

There was an awkward silence.

"I have nothing to say, Boss," said Viper, although what he was really thinking was, "It was four in the morning, you don't get very many laughs at four in the morning, and I sure as H—l wasn't going to waste this one." Despite his often stern exterior, Viper did have a sense of humor, which unfortunately translated badly onto the new recruits he trained.

"What I'M wondering," Viper thought to himself, "is why on Earth you'd ever send those two brats out with a talking Meowth as 'supervision'."

The truth is, Giovanni had his own reasons for the setup, but he wasn't about to waste them on an incompetent like Viper. He had no time for bratty adolescent trainees, either. Two hormonal exes on the same mission was bound to end in SOMETHING going wrong, and he sure as heck wasn't about to put any of his COMPETENT employees in charge of those loose cannons. Sending Meowth with them was more to test the creature than to test the trainees; the trainees would test each other in due time. (Giovanni cursed himself for the dirty pun that flashed through his mind – doggone it, he had SERIOUS business to attend to.) Putting the three of them in the wilderness, all alone, away from visible witnesses, would surely tease out whatever was truly inside those young... trainees.

Giovanni idly wondered which of the three would survive the experience, and how many. But in the meantime, he had to properly... REPRIMAND Viper.

This was going to be fun.

"Methinks you need a little more... BACKBONE," he said, casting a glance at his female Persian, Lilith. "Perhaps the next time your young charges throw a tantrum or two, you'll have the presence of mind to do THIS!"

With a single, swift movement of his hand, Giovanni ordered Lilith to strike.

It was all over in a moment, ending in Viper clutching his bleeding face in his clawed hands, and Lilith, cool as an Articuno, picking large Seviper scales out from between her paws.

"Underlings need DISCIPLINE, Viper," Giovanni chided. "And no one disciplines better than nature's predators. Remind them who you are, Viper. Remind them who WE are. Rocket-Dan – what does that stand for?"

"Researching, Obtaining, Creating, Keeping, Enforcing, and Transforming a Dangerous Animal Nation," Viper recited painfully, still holding his face and trying to stop the bleeding. "But how does that-"

"DEADLY animal nation," Giovanni corrected. "Survival of the fittest. If the weak are to survive, they must MAKE themselves strong. Allowing Musashi and Kojiro to prolong their moment of weakness was inexcusable. You WILL do better next time, correct?"

Viper nodded wordlessly. No point in stoking Giovanni's flames with his own breath; speaking metaphorically, of course. Seviper weren't fire-breathers.

"I believe you have other trainees to see to," Giovanni said stiffly. "You are dismissed."

Viper slithered away just as fast as his grey-green scaled tail could get him.

**Mt. Silver – a path by the river; 10:25 AM**

"Well, THIS is a fine mess YOU'VE gotten us into, Jame-SON!" Jessie whined as she trudged across the mountain path with James and Meowth following close behind (but not too close; both of them already had bruises from recent Jessie encounters and weren't about to ask for more).

"Oh, yes, because it's always MY fault," James griped under his breath. Being sent down the mountain to some remote location marked with an "x" on their only map as part of another "training exercise" was bad enough, but with nothing but a talking Meowth who wouldn't stop talking, between him and the teenage incarnation of the Woman From Hell, James wasn't about to be the merry sunshine of the group. He wasn't about to be its punching bag, either, or so he believed.

"At least da view's lovely," Meowth said optimistically, motioning to the white fluffy clouds, purple mountain majesties, and so on. The talking Pokemon was in the best mood of the three, despite Jessie having knocked him repeatedly into the water "by accident" – Meowth took comfort in knowing that as her supervisor, he'd get the last laugh when he reported her behavior to Viper and Giovanni. Once Meowth had made THAT clear, Jessie's abuse had grown a lot more subtle, but Meowth wasn't about to give up on reforming her. After all, Giovanni had made HIM the "top cat" of the three (those were the boss's exact words, much to Jessie and James' horror), and doggone it, he was going to go above and beyond all his own boss's expectations. Meowth had never had a job before, and he took this one surprisingly seriously for a Pokemon who'd previously survived by being a scourge on humanity via shameless foodnapping.

"Besoides, it's kinda roimantic, ain't it?" Meowth added, hoping to improve Jessie's mood. He knew nothing about Jessie and James' past relationship, but if he had, he probably would have said it anyway. But because he didn't, Meowth even dared to get close enough to Jessie to elbow her in the knee (the highest point a little guy like him could reach) and point out James, who was sitting on a boulder shaking rocks out of his boots.

Big mistake for Meowth, as Jessie promptly threw him across the river like a skipping stone until the Pokemon collided with a REAL stone and was knocked close to unconscious, almost slipping into the river.

"Hoilp me!" Meowth yelped, quickly scrambling up the rock. "Somebody hoilp me!" Realizing that Jessie was standing by laughing, Meowth added, "Da boss is gonna hear about DIS one! Oi can't swim!"

James' head snapped up from examining his foot, and when he saw that Meowth was indeed stranded, he got into Hero Mode, making a valiant attempt to swiftly cross the river with one boot off and one boot on, which wasn't at all fun. Somehow, the sharpest rocks were always under the foot without a boot, and once James even stepped on a Kingler. It was hard to say who suffered more: James, or the Kingler.

"Showoff," Jessie muttered under her breath as James breathlessly headed back through the water with Meowth clinging to his now very wet head. "I'm not about to get one-upped by YOU, you self-righteous b-d."

"What kind of Pokemon is a B-d, anyway?" James asked as he came out of the river with Meowth in tow. (Meowth cringed at the question.)

Jessie was so appalled at this intense burst of naivety that she honestly couldn't answer. Meowth, catching the look in her eyes, decided to bluff for James' sake. "Oh, jus' a Legendary bug-type. Dey don't come dis fa' up Mt. Silva."

"Got it," said James, believing every word of it. He set Meowth down on firm ground, then was horrified to see a Sneasel running off with his other boot on its head. "Hey, stop that!" he yelled, taking off after the Sneasel, but it disappeared into the tall grass before James could get his hands on it.

"It's also a VERY nasty insult, so don't go spreading that word around," Jessie added quickly, afraid James would bring it up in normal conversation and lead to an extremely awkward moment. "Most people aren't even aware it IS a Pokemon."

James seemed to get the hint; he promptly used that word to describe the Sneasel that had stolen his boot, which had just run up a tree and was now chewing on the rubber footwear as if it were a licorice stick.

Meowth gave Jessie a look that said "See what you've created?" Jessie just shrugged and pulled out a Poke-ball from her Poke-belt. Might as well show those twerps what SHE could do. And with the Pokemon that James still foolishly believed she'd named after him, no less. In truth, she'd had it long before she'd even met him, and the name was (she thought) clearly a coincidence. Her Pokemon had actually been named after her favorite brand of designer clothing, which she'd never actually been able to afford but had always dreamed of both designing and modeling for.

"Go, Kojiro! Snatch that boot and boot that snatcher!"

Out came a Staryu, spinning through the air and knocking into the poor Sneasel, which fell over backwards into the river. Unfortunately, so did James' boot, which was washed away by the rapids to where neither James nor Sneasel could reach it.

Another type of Pokemon, however, could.

"Go, Valin!" said James, pulling out his own Poke-ball and releasing a Carnivine, which promptly – to his embarrassment – chomped down on his head with its abnormally large mouth. Then, seemingly effortlessly, the Carnivine shot out a Vine Whip from its tentacle-legs that snatched the boot out of the lake and brought it back without Valin even having let go of James' head, although it eventually did so.

Jessie snickered. "You still have Carnavalin? I'd have ditched that lug long ago if I were you. That's not a Pokemon; that's a lawsuit waiting to happen." She watched James thrash around; evidently, just because Valin had stopped biting James didn't mean it was going to stop hugging him.

"HEY!" James yelled, struggling to escape Valin's leafy embrace. "What are you, jealous? It's a POKEMON!"

"So THIS is why you're afraid of body contact," Jessie giggled, thought not at all meanly. "I never would have guessed."

"Get off me you menace!" James yelled as Valin snuggled him tightly. "I'm not a Poke-doll!"

"She knows dat," Meowth added unhelpfully.

James was horrified to hear this. "SHE?"

"Would ya be happiah widda MALE Pokemon kissin' up to ya?"

"SHUT UP!"

Jessie was greatly amused by this. "You've had Valin this long, and you didn't even know its gender?"

"I didn't WANT to know! I told my parents it was male so they'd let me keep it! Gedditoffamee GEDDITOFFAMEE!"

"She loikes ya," Meowth sniggered. "She sez she's hoipin' you'll evolve inta a Grass-toipe someday."

"What? I'm HUMAN, you menace! And I'll always BE human, too!"

"That could change if you get accepted," said Jessie, smirking at Meowth. "Rocket-Dan specializes in genetic experimentation, even on its own agents. Haven't you noticed our drill sergeant is half Seviper?"

James' screams grew even louder than the rushing river.

* * *

Next chapter:


	4. The Lies That Bind

A/N: Tessa, the only fanchar I've received so far, will be appearing in two to four chapters ahead. I'm still waiting for another taker as her partner – remember, the form is at the end of chapter two.

**Episode 001 pt 4: The Lies That Bind**

**Somewhere further down Mt. Silver – shortly before sundown**

"I need to go to the bathroom."

Jessie snorted. "This is the woods, James. Pick a tree."

James looked absolutely horrified. "Use a TREE?"

"Unless you'd like to use the river, which I'm going to throw you in if you don't stop whining. What do you expect to find out here, a public facility? Just get out of sight and do your business. Who's going to see you?"

"Um, let me think," James muttered sarcastically, knowing full well who Suspect No. 1 was on his list.

"What are you, paranoid? Do you want me to stand guard and-"

"NO!" yelled James, running off into the thickest part of the forest he could find (which ended up in lots of nettle stings and tripping over vines on his part).

Jessie didn't follow. The only reason she'd made that last suggestion was to get James out of the way as soon as possible, because she knew that anyone with sense would know that, after what he'd been though with her, it was too obvious to mention... well, what shouldn't really be mentioned at all.

"For a kid who grew up on the streets, he sure is prissy," Jessie thought out loud.

This earned her a snort from Meowth. "Grew up on Wall Street's mo' like it. Least ta hear 'is resume tell it to da tune o' 'bout two t'ousand grand ta keep dem quiet 'bout how much 'e-"

But Meowth was talking to no one, because Jessie had taken off after James with murder in her eyes.

* * *

James had just finished his business when suddenly Jessie appeared out of nowhere and pinned him to the tree he'd been using. Judging from the look on her face, she wasn't there to hand him a roll of toilet paper. With nowhere to run and nothing but air between the Woman From Hell and his manly parts, James did the only sane thing he could think of: he screamed and hurled Carnavalin's Poke-ball into Jessie's face.

Jessie didn't seem to mind being smacked with the first projectile much, but having Valin pop out and try to devour her face was something else entirely. James muttered an apology to his Carnivine and quickly ducked out of the way, running for cover while discreetly holding his pants shut. At least Jessie's Pokemon was a Water-type, and those weren't very effective on Grass-types like a Carnivine.

He didn't bother to ask her what her problem with him was this time; he knew that with Jessie, it was always something.

* * *

Meowth was rather surprised to see James rushing right towards him, and even more surprised when James grabbed him with both hands, scooped him up in his arms, and kept running.

"Ay! Whad's da idea?" Meowth asked as James sped across a bridge that looked decidedly unsafe to speed across.

"We've got to get out of here," James panted. "I've seen Jessie when she's in one of these moods, and she's lethal. Better stay out of the way, maybe for a few hours or so. Or maybe forever."

"Oops," Meowth muttered. "Mebbe I shouldn' have toid her 'bout yo' net worth, huh? She must've dought yo' was flat broke or some'din' from da way SHE toid-"

James was horrified to hear this. "You told Jessie about my MONEY? I paid two million dollars for Rocket-Dan to keep that quiet, and you SPILLED it?"

Meowth looked sheepish. "Hey, if dis cat got yoir tongue, den 'e moight as well use it, ya dig?"

"I'll be digging both our GRAVES if Jessie crosses that bridge!" James was as frantic as if a Dusknoir apolcalyspe had suddenly been announced. "We're dead, we're dead, we're done for, we're – GAHH!"

Jessie, for no discernible reason, literally flew out of nowhere and landed right on top of James (who had fortunately by now fastened his pants shut). As James was still holding Meowth, the poor Pokemon soon found himself stuck inside what was literally a knuckle sandwich. Carnavalin was nowhere to be seen; actually, she was the one who had hurled Jessie across the river in the first place, and the Carnivine was now locked in battle with Kojiro the Staryu, who was using Water Pulse in hopes of confusing the woman scorned.

Meowth, in the meantime, was not about to become a liquid cat. With what would've been a mighty roar if he hadn't had the breath squeezed out of him, he extended his claws to their full length and punctured both Jessie and (by accident) James as well. There were two screeches of pain and agony (both human, but neither sounding like it), and the living sandwich flew apart like the two halves of a common Poke-ball failing to catch a Legendary.

Jessie clutched her chest in pain. "Ooh, you did NOT, you mangy tomcat!" Meowth blushed, realizing where he'd clawed her, and sped off into the woods, clambering up a tree and hiding between the boughs.

"I can explain everything!" James yelled, holding his arms out ahead of him, palms outward, hoping Jessie wouldn't come closer and do anything unspeakable to him. "But first of all, I'm sorry I called you that word back at base, and I promise I won't do that ever again – EVER! Now, please don't kill-"

But he noticed something quite unusual: Jessie wasn't lunging at him like he'd expected, but was huddled in a fetal position, obviously in pain. Humans weren't as sturdy as Pokemon; after being thrown across a river by a Carnivine and clawed deep in the breasts by a Meowth, obviously she needed some recuperation before she bloodily murdered her partner.

"Uh, Jessie, do you need any help?"

"I'm FINE, James-SON," Jessie hissed, although obviously she wasn't. "Just get your butt out of here before I remove it for you. I don't NEED a partner on this kriffing mission." She glared towards the trees Meowth was hiding in. "Or a fresh Pokemon, for that matter!"

"You're hurt!" James said, as if by stating the obvious he could make it all just go away.

Jessie glared at him. "Brilliant deduction. Now get lost."

"If I give you a potion to heal yourself with, will you promise to let me explain?"

"I went to kriffing medical school, James. I don't NEED your stinking potions."

"Well, you don't seem to have any of your own, Ms. I-Went-To-Kriffing-Medical-School." James realized what he'd repeated (in a mocking tone, no less), then covered his mouth in shame. "Blast it! Looks like that bike gang left more marks on me than those scars from falling off that time SOMEONE stole my training wheels."

Jessie had actually been the one to steal James' training wheels, but she wasn't about to acknowledge it. "FINE! Go on and bruise my shattered ego as I pick up the pieces of my dignity from the cold hard ground! Just – just get out of my sight, you lying b-d. I don't want to hear about your horrible childhood living out on the streets with nothing but the clothes on your back and two million dollars lying around."

"See, I knew you'd be jealous, and I didn't want you to feel bad..."

"Some of us would KILL for a fraction of that wealth!" Jessie was shaking now, and James could almost swear he heard sobs in her voice. "I get it, I get it. You felt sorry for poor orphaned Jessie and thought you'd craft a sob story so she'd relate and be your oblivious main squeeze. Well, who's getting the squeeze put on him NOW, huh?" Somehow, Jessie managed to stand up and maintain her balance through her entire tirade – clearly she was tougher than she looked.

But she was still injured, and she collasped a moment later. James, after some hesitation from his healthy self-preservation instinct, reached into his backpack and pulled out a vial of potion, handing it to Jessie. "Please don't kill me," he whispered as he pressed it into her hands, clearly recognizing her returning glare that clearly said that she was barely controlling herself from just plain slapping him, or worse. But she drank the potion, her eyes never once leaving James' humiliated face.

James found he couldn't look her in the eyes. "I'm sorry..." he finally murmured, turning away in shame. In his heart, he knew that they'd never be together – they were far too different – and that odds were he'd never make it in Rocket-Dan anyway with a heart like his, but he didn't see himself having a choice. It was either work for Rocket-Dan, the one place where he could get a paying job without the requirement of parental permission, or move back into the gilded cage of his youth and face eventual matrimony to a madwoman with an Oddish and a whip. "I'm so, so sorry..."

Meowth watched the whole thing from his safe haven in the tree. "He loikes her? Afta whad'all she's puid HIM drough?" The cat Pokemon shook his head. "He's nuitso!"

Jessie seemed to think the same thing of James as she reluctantly but gratefully downed the potion. "Um... James?" she asked timidly, surprisingly cowed by his act of kindness. "Why... why are you being so nice to me?"

What was James supposed to say to that? "Because... because you're my teammate," he answered, since answering what he really wanted to say – "I'm still crazy about you, even if I don't know why" – would have been instant suicide, at least for his ego (and possibly his virginity). "We're a team," he said out loud. "We need to act like one, even if we don't even like each other." (He cringed as he said that, knowing it was a lie on his part.) "I don't want to fail you like all your other teammates did."

"They didn't fail me," Jessie whispered. "I failed THEM."

"Mood swing much?" Meowth wondered quietly aloud from his safe haven. Whatever else the two humans said to each other, Meowth never heard it, because he was suddenly whacked with a flying, Valin-thrown Staryu and knocked both out of the tree and out of consciousness.

* * *

Next chapter: Under the stars, Jessie and James discuss their respective pasts... and their possible futures. Will any new revelations come up? And just why does James' last name happen to be the name of Jessie's favorite fashion design company? (Sorry, that last one is just too obvious for me not to make a crack about...)


	5. We Lose Our Way

Warning – this chapter contains a Too Much Information moment. You'll know what I mean if you read it, but let's just say that it involves Jessie and... yeah. I don't do sex descriptions, but I'm not shy about mentioning the more brutal secrets of what I imagine Jessie's past to have been like. There's a reason this stuff is never discussed in the anime.

**Episode 001 pt. 5: We Lose Our Way...**

**Jessie and James' camp – shortly after sundown**

Meowth regained consciousness to find himself lying comfortably on top of somebody's unrolled sleeping bag. It was now dark out, and Jessie and James had built a fire and were sitting around it – well, Jessie was sitting around it; James was standing over Meowth with an empty potion spray can in his hand. Obviously he'd just used it. (Potions came in two types – drinkable, for humans, and sprayable, for Pokemon. (Technically, both worked on each species, but in the heat of battle, Pokemon weren't expected to be able to stop for a drink – and as for humans, there was the small problem of a spray-on potion making their clothes smell funny.)

"Thank Ho-Oh," James said in relief. "For a while I thought that revive crystal was a dud. But you're okay, right? Sorry about that; Valin tends to get a little over-enthusiastic for battling."

"Dat's all roight," Meowth reassured him. "Oi've been huit wuss. What'd she hit me wid, anyway?"

"Jessie's Staryu. But don't worry – Kojiro's okay. A couple limbs broke off it, but Staryu can regenerate as long as their core's still intact. I've used up all my packed potions, though." He sighed. "We should be fine, though. Jessie's gathered some good medicinal berries in the woods, and she's saving them in her backpack in case anything else bad happens." And something bad was bound to happen, with Jessie around, but James knew better than to say that out loud.

"Speakin' o' berries, when da we eat? I hoip ya saved dose Staryu limbs fo' me, 'cuz I could go fo' some sushi."

James shuddered. "Don't say that to Jessie!"

"I can hear you boys, you know," Jessie said loudly from her perch on a log by the campfire. "And it's all right – I was saving the broken limbs for Meowth anyway. I don't think Jiro will mind since it knows it was an accident. Just don't come back for thirds, Meowthster or I'll feed Jiro YOUR limbs. Don't think I won't do it, because I WILL."

Jessie didn't mention that in her past, sometimes she'd been so poor that she'd had to eat some of her Staryu's regenerating limbs just to survive, since honestly enough she still felt guilty about it. Back when they'd lived on the streets in the short period between her orphaning and when she was accepted into foster care, Kojiro had intentionally shed one of its limbs after hearing its young trainer sob for a hours in an alleyway over her empty stomach (of course, Jessie freaked out when this happened and didn't take the hint at first). Thankfully, Jessie had always been able to find plenty of Staryu-appropriate food for her Pokemon to help it regenerate, but still, that she'd never quite gotten over the fact that she was essentially eating her Pokemon alive. Jessie sighed. Yet another reminder for them both about how cruel life was.

Jiro itself was lying on the log next to Jessie, using the mouth on the underside of its core to suck the insides out of one of the clams that Jessie had fished out of the river. Two piles of clamshells sat on either side of it: one pile was entirely devoid of actual clam meat, but the other was still fresh. Carnavalin, preferring to avoid the flames, was a short distance away, dangling upside down from a large tree with her mouth wide open in hopes of attracting bugs. Unfortunately for her, all the bugs were attracted to the flames of the campfire, so Valin went hungry that night.

Meowth didn't. He rushed over to the campfire, eagerly crouching down and holding up his forepaws in a perfect "quadruped beg" position. What made it even cuter was that in that position, he actually looked like a normal Meowth, not a Meowth irregularly walking on its hind legs like a human. The illusion, of course, was broken (or made even cuter, take your pick) by the fact that Meowth was verbally begging, "Please, please, please, please, PLEASE gimme the sushi!"

Jessie actually had a mental shock there, as she'd previously considered Meowth nothing more than one step removed from a Pokemorph. Meowth's behavior was a reminder that the boss hadn't sent them a Pokemorph supervisor like Viper, but an actual talking Pokemon. The thought both fascinated and unnerved Jessie; she'd always wondered just how intelligent Pokemon were, particularly after Jiro's first sacrificial "food offering." The thought of what her own Pokemon might think of her for some of the very things she'd done to protect it was quite disturbing, all things considered. But she wasn't about to tell James that (she thought).

"All right, all right, you filthy cannibal," Jessie teased in a relatively good-natured tone, all things considered. She dropped the limbs in front of Meowth's paws. "Try not to catch salmonella."

"Whad kinda Pokemon is a Shayminella?" Meowth asked with his mouth full. "Dossit taste gud?"

"It's a poison-type," Jessie deadpanned. "It shares the same natural habitat as B-ds. You should know that, since you're an expert on the subject."

Meowth gave Jessie a look that told her that the cat-creature was trying to decide if she was joking around, or if she was really three steps short of an escalator. It didn't help when James, innocently trying to ease the conversation along, gleefully asked, "Which region is that? Have you ever been there?"

If James hadn't been so nice to her before, Jessie would have snapped back that she felt as if she was there right now. As it was, Jessie felt she could afford a little light banter. "It's in the Pokemon Dream World. I only wound up there one time after drinking a bottle of fermented Aprijuice I found lying by the side of the road."

James drew back, not because he didn't know she was joking (he did), but because he couldn't stand the idea of drinking something that unsanitary. "Who in their right mind would even joke about drinking something you found off the street?"

That was a mistake.

Jessie snapped into eye contact with James and glared lightning bolts at him. "Have you ever gone to bed hungry?" she asked, suddenly as serious as a heart attack, which James suddenly felt as if he was about to have.

Being the brilliant wordsmith he was, James promptly came up with the most prudent retort he could muster: "Um..."

"Of course you haven't, Mr. Liar-With-Pants-On-Fire. And even if you have, then at least you actually had a BED."

James realized that the campfire wasn't the only thing making him sweat.

"Have you ever waited for months for a parent to return from a long trip, only to learn that they never would?"

James shook his head no.

"I thought not! Have you ever been taken in from the streets, only to lose everything all over again from a brutal attack by a rival ninja clan?"

That one came out of left field. "Ninja clan?"

"Don't get me started! How about having to sell your body to survive before you've even hit puberty because the only other alternative was eating your own Pokemon?" Jessie was infuriated. "WELL, I HAVE!"

James fell clear off the log when he heard that one. "Too much information! TOO MUCH INFORMATION!"

Jessie, realizing what she'd just blurted out in anger, decided she quite agreed with James. It WAS too much information. Even Meowth and Carnavalin were staring at her in shock.

"Okay, let's just pretend I didn't say that last part. But ANYWAY..."

"Jessie, if I'd known about any of that, I'd have DONE something, I really would have!" James blurted back. What kind of guys had Jessie slept with, anyway? "I – I – I'd never have let that HAPPEN to you if I had anything to do about it!"

"A likely story," Jessie hissed. "How much have YOU ever done for ME? You at least knew I was from the wrong side of the tracks; you didn't even admit to me that you had any MEANS to help me!"

He knew he was in hot water this time. He wondered if anyone would ever find his remains. "Maybe I just didn't want you to hate me!"

Jessie was livid. "Oh, yes, and you're doing SUCH a great job at THAT, James-SON!"

"What about those Nuggets and the other presents I kept sneaking into your backp-" James covered his mouth, realizing how embarrassing that was. He'd gone to great lengths to ensure that Jessie would never guess that it was him, including –

"So that WAS your handwriting on the notes?" Jessie gaped at James. "Why on EARTH did you sign them, 'From your secret sister'?"

James grinned nervously, hoping he had at least forestalled his inevitable demise. "Threw you off track, didn't it?"

"Jameson, should I kiss you or slap you?"

James pretended to be very interested in reaching into his backpack and pulling out his field rations. (He was getting hungry anyway.) "Given what I've heard from you tonight, I'd rather you slap me." (He instantly regretted saying that, as Jessie promptly punched him in the face.) "OW! OW! Okay, I don't think it counts as a slap if you keep your fist closed!" James regarded Jessie with caution between his fingers, holding his injured face in both hands and letting his backpack lie open on the ground. "Is this why you got mad when I told you I was staying a virgin?"

"I don't want to TALK about it, James. I..." Jessie took a deep breath, then let it out. "Okay, maybe I do want to talk about it. I was jealous of you."

"WHAT?"

"She's sayin' she tried ta make ya stoop t' hoir level, huh?" Meowth teased.

With a wild yell of fury, Jessie threw a punch at Meowth, and James, trying to intercede on the Pokemon's behalf, grabbed her arm to restrain her. The end result was that James was reflexively thrown against the tree that Carnavalin was hanging from, breaking her branch off the tree and onto James' head, ending with a startled Valin suddenly snapping her mouth shut and nearly biting her trainer's face off. James managed to get his Pokemon off his head, only to find Jessie, Jiro, and Meowth staring at him, embarrassed. (At least he presumed Jiro was staring – it had its "face," the gem side of its core, facing him. James seemed to remember that Staryu sensed light and color through their core jewels, if his studies at Pokemon Tech high school with Jessie had taught him anything.)

"Um, sorry?" Jessie asked sheepishly. "That was reflex."

**Cue track 02 – "Get Back Up"**

_(If you're not following with the TobyMac "Tonight" CD, ignore this and kindly don't hate me.)_

"Okay, now I believe the ninja part," James answered, rubbing his head. Two blows to his handsome face in two minutes. Wow. And also Ow. "You DO have those medicinal berries, right? I feel like I've had a run-in with a Rampardos using Headbutt."

"You don't feel uncomfortable getting help from a slut?" Jessie wasn't even sure why she'd said that. Her emotions were bubbling up inside her – guilt over everything, embarrassment over everything, anger over everything. She honestly felt more like strangling something than healing something, but darn it, James was just too pathetic-looking for her to leave alone.

"I feel a lot more uncomfortable with a two-inch-high bump protruding from my head, so knock yourself out." James struggled to pull himself out from under the fallen branch, only to get protectively glomped by Carnavalin. "We're teammates, right? We stick together. Um, but not too close together, if you know what I mean," James added, hoping he hadn't accidentally said anything sexy.

"I get you, Lover Boy." Jessie sighed to herself as she retrieved her backpack and started to bring it over to James. "I'm... I'm sorry, James. For everything. If you'd done to me what I've done to you, I would have killed you by now."

"Well, dere's still time, roight?" Meowth joked, earning himself a stern glare from James.

"Shut up, Meowthster. I'm not going looking for a fourteenth partner anytime soon."

"Yeesh, I wuz bein' sarcastic."

"I KNOW."

While trying to avoid both humans' respective glares, Meowth's eyes fell on James' rations in his open backpack. "Hey, Jimmy, mind if I have a teensy, weensy li'l bite o' yo' chow? I only got Poke-blocks fo' my rations." And two Staryu limbs and quite a few wild berries along the way, but Meowth didn't mention them. He'd gone hungry far too many times to even think of leaving his stomach the least bit empty – like all cats, he was overly fond of food.

"Help yourself," James shrugged, not realizing that he was creating a monster. "Just leave some for me, okay?"

Unfortunately, Meowth hadn't quite heard that last part, despite Meowth ears being more sensitive to sound than human ears. Before long, James had only crumbs left of his ration bar – crumbs scattered all over his backpack, no less. "Oops."

James was horrified. "Meowth! That was my dinner!"

"So? Youse gots ton o' berries from Jess, didn't ja?" Meowth was unrepentant.

Jessie shrugged her shoulders. She was about to reach for her own rations bar (she'd brought her entire backpack with her when tending to James), but hesitated when she saw the despairing look on James' face. Sighing, she reluctantly broke her rations bar in half, sharing with James. "All right, O wealthy one. I guess you're not going hungry this time either."

"You don't have to do that," James insisted, pushing it away, but Jessie insisted.

"We eat together as a team. I can't have you fainting and slowing us down when we finally reach that target, right?"

"Right, I guess," James ate his half of the rations politely. "But how will we get back across that old bridge? It certainly didn't feel safe when I was running across it with Meowth."

"You crossed it before, right? I'm sure you can cross it one more time."

"Easy for you to say, Ms. Ninja Pants. You JUMPED across the chasm."

"What are you talking about, Mr. Clumsy Bottoms? I was THROWN by your Carnivine!" Jessie couldn't help but smile. Despite everything she'd done, James wasn't too proud to associate with her, even if he was a little bit stubborn on accepting food from her.

"Mebbe if he's so doubtfo' 'bout da bridge, Vali-girl can t'row HIM across da rivah!" Meowth suggested cheerily.

"HEY!" James yelled, not at all amused by this idea. "I've had enough injuries already! I don't plan on getting any more!"

What an ironic statement THAT turned out to be.


	6. Get Back Up Again?

Author's note: This chapter went off in an unexpected direction... originally, I wanted it to mirror the scene in the anime episode, where Jessie and James vow to become the best team after sharing their inner secrets (James tells how he's been running all his life, and Jessie tells how she felt she had never been loved before... at least in the Japanese version, according to Bulbapedia), but the end result startled me; apparently James has more emotional baggage than I thought. Part of this chapter was inspired by Watches Foxes' in-progress story "20 Things James Doesn't Talk About," particularly the first chapter. (I recommend reading it, as well as "20 Things Jessie Doesn't Talk About," which is completed. Here's holding out for a "20 Things Meowth Doesn't Talk About"!)

James Kojiro's darker side obviously exists, since he did after all stick with Rocket-Dan and even brag about his evilness in the anime... it's finding that right chiaroscuro that's difficult. Why is James the way he is? Who IS he, anyway? That's a puzzle I freely admit I'm still working on. So many of my stories focus on him, yet I can't truly say I know who he really is. Is he a good guy that sometimes pretends to be evil, or an evil guy that sometimes pretends to be good? "O wretched man that I am!" to quote the apostle Paul (after a short musing on how he does the exact opposite of what he wants to do in relation to the law). Poor James.

And poor GaliCat, trying to make sense of a guy who's victim to horrid characterization errors. I have a crush on James, but I don't know why exactly. Maybe it's because I relate to him somehow, being suspended between my own selfish desires and my wish to help others? I even imagine autistic traits in him, such as his taking metaphoric phrases literally at times (a trait I share with him)... but is that just for comedic effect? After all, cross-dressing didn't make him gay, REGARDLESS of all the believers that it did; Dressed for Jess Success ultimately disproved that notion by showing how nervous James was about the cross-dressing and confirming that he had indeed gone a long time without doing so, as opposed to simply doing it off-screen as some could speculate otherwise. But that's off-topic. On with the tale.

**Episode 001 pt. 6: ...Get Back Up Again?**

**Middle of the Night, Jessie and James' camp**

"You can't sleep either?"

Jessie's question was rhetorical. James had been up the better part of the night, pacing around the glowing embers of the campfire, muttering violent threats against any Sneasel that passed them by (threats that he, quite frankly, would be far too terrified to carry out if an actual Sneasel did show up, given that it was totally dark out and he'd probably mistake the creature for something far larger and hungrier).

"I'm just... angry. Still. Not at you, of course," James replied, crossing his fingers. He was a LITTLE bit cross at Jessie for never telling him the truth of her past until now, but James wanted to keep his head attached, so he chose not to rile the former ninja. "At everyone else, really. Everyone who's hurt us both."

"Everyone that's hurt you, and that doesn't include me?"

"Okay, Jess, now I know you're baiting me!"

"Sorry." Jessie was sitting up in her sleeping bag, propped up against a tree. She didn't worry about getting ticks in her back – she'd always come prepared for any eventuality she could think of, including homemade bug repellent. "It's just, who ELSE could have hurt you? I mean, those bullies at Pokemon Tech were really nothing compared to what I've seen on the streets – pathetic, really; nothing but a gang of squirming Wurmple thinking they're tough Dustox..."

"That would explain why they refused to go anywhere near me while we were dating. I hope you didn't rough them up TOO much."

"James, do you realize how ridiculous you sound? You're sympathizing with your persecutors."

"Is that a bad thing? I mean, look at US out here. If we join Rocket-Dan, WE'LL be the persecutors."

"Jay-ames. You're getting off the subject."

James noted that Jessie wasn't using her usual irate "Jame-SON!" but was using the playfully nagging nickname she'd used in Pokemon Tech when he was too busy poking her Staryu to concentrate on the report they were both supposed to be working on. (Jiro, like many Pokemon, quite enjoyed a good acupressure massage, and James, who had never seen a Staryu before, couldn't get over how weird it felt to touch one. Childish, really, even considering that James was still pretty much a child himself at the time.)

"Okay, so I'm getting off the subject, but I always know exactly what I'm talking about." James paused. "Wait, what were we talking about?"

Jessie sounded more ticked-off this time. "Your times of persecution, which I am seriously considering renewing at this moment."

James wished she'd just shut up. "Are you ever subtle at all?"

"Are YOU ever going to answer my first question?" Jessie squirmed impatiently in her sleeping bag. "Look, I've spilled on MY past. What could POSSIBLY have happened to you that you just don't want to talk about?"

"What, you think I have some deep, dark secret hidden away that I'm keeping from you?"

"Just tell me what it is, or your Carnivine gets it."

James gulped. Granted, Jessie still had the type disadvantage Pokemon-wise, but the very thought of Carnavalin getting hurt in any way severely frightened him. "Okay, okay, I'll tell you. It's my fiancee."

James had never seen anyone get out of their sleeping bag that fast in his entire life. He was unlikely to ever see it again either, because Jessie was suddenly crushing him against the nearest tree and giving him the Death Stare. "Your FIANCEE? I thought you made that up to get out of our night of satisfaction!"

"Why would I make something like that up?" James stammered, surprised that Meowth was still sound asleep on James' own pillow. Was there something wrong with that cat's hearing, or was he just a heavy sleeper? Maybe he was pretending to be asleep to avoid being part of the upcoming casualty toll. One never knew with that stinker.

"Well, let me think. First you told me you were asexual, and then you said you were gay, neither of which were true. At least, I'm assuming that last one, though I'm seriously reconsidering its validity."

"My parents wanted a girl, okay? And if I was gay, I wouldn't have been dating YOU, right? THOSE things I just made up to keep you off me!"

She relaxed her hold a little, but still held him firm. "And you expect me to believe you weren't making up, quote-unquote, 'Jessiebelle'?"

"I wish I was making her up."

"RIGHT. Tack an extra word to the end of my name and make up a monster that supposedly looks exactly like I do. You're mocking me, James Kojiro. Either way, you're mocking me."

James wondered if he should have notified his next of kin before trying to join up with Rocket-Dan, then realized that he didn't have any. "Look, the reason I didn't tell you is because I had no intention of going back home and marrying that swamp witch anyway. Why did you think I joined the gang with you?"

Jessie let out a breath she didn't even know she was holding. "Well, you hadn't told me the truth about your upbringing, so just now... I thought you'd only been playing me."

James let out several breaths he'd been holding all at once. "Trust me, I'd never do that to you. You're far too dangerous."

"Thank you, James."

"Don't mention it. Now, a little breathing space...?"

She let him have it. He slumped to the ground in relief, holding his back up against the tree and accidentally angering a bunch of termites living behind the bark. "Thanks, Jess. That feels much bet... what's with this tree, anyway? It feels like I've got bugs crawling down my – AI YI YI YI YI! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"

The termites had used Bug Bite, and it was super effective.

One herbal salve later, James decided he was just about ready to go to sleep now (even though Meowth, after a rude awakening via sissy-yell, was once again out cold on his pillow). Jessie, however, had other plans. "So tell me more about this Jessiebelle. Did she try to - you too?"

"Jessie, please don't say that word. And no, her brand of tyranny was more G-rated. Let's just say that she highly believed in micromanagement with a whip."

"Spare the rod and spoil the child, huh? Not that you weren't spoiled enough already by your parents, I'll bet..."

"Shut up! My parents were the spoiled ones. They treated me like a status symbol! Sure, being heir to Kojiro Limited sounds great at first, but when you're actually-"

"KOJIRO LIMITED?" Jessie's eyes shone brighter than her Staryu. "You're kidding! I've always dreamed of working there! And you ran away from INHERITING it?"

"Yeah, that's how bad Jessiebelle was!" James then muttered under his breath, "Not to mention being infamous as the model for the children's line in BOTH genders..."

"You're kidding me, right? They put you in a dress?"

"A dress, nothing. They put me in every dress in their inventory! And don't even get me started on the bikini top..."

"BIKI-" Jessie burst out into laughter that awakened nearly every Pokemon within a hundred feet. James wished she hadn't; he tensed in nervous anticipation of some large Pokemon emerging angrily and devastating the campsite. Meowth, surprisingly, went back to sleep almost immediately.

"Scream it, why don't you? Maybe that Sneasel will come back and chew up my other boot!"

"So those photos hacked onto the school blog WEREN'T doctored?"

"You know what? I'm going to bed, Meowth or no Meowth. YOU can take up Sneasel watch." With an angry flounce, James uncharacteristically shoved Meowth out of his sleeping bag, crawled in, pulled in his pillow, and once again sealed himself inside, mirroring the past incident. "And if you toss me in the river, I'll haunt you forever!"

Meowth, now fully awake, stared at the lump inside James' sleeping bag. "Yeesh. Wha' set 'IM off? Yo' da one I dot wuz da loose cannon, Jess."

Jessie didn't answer. She'd never seen James behave like this before. What had she said?


	7. Even Villains Have Their Enemies

A/N: Finally, a new chapter! This one needed a LOT of polishing, and even now, I'm not sure I got it right. You'll have to review and let me know if I did or not!

**Episode 001 pt. 7: Even Villains Have Their Enemies**

_Are they asleep yet?_

_**They seem to be. Do we strike now?**_

_I'd say no. The male vermin seems to hold a grudge against you._

_**Well, it's now or later, and he's sound asleep. Couldn't hurt an ant crawling on his back if he tried. And given how he reacted to those termites, I'm sure he'll scream like a baby Whismur once we jump him. Then we'll silence him forever.**_

_That Carnivine of his might wake up, you know, and things could get ugly. Not that I'm ever scared of vermin, but that Musashi girl is a monster, and if we play her right, she could still be quite useful. Did you see what she did to that brothel we tried to trap her in that one time?_

_**That wasn't MY assignment. I'M the one assigned to the MALE.**_

_Well, you did a lousy job of offing him the first time. He never should have even been born alive. Some False One YOU make._

_**Well, how was I supposed to know that nurse would... oh, never mind. I'll remedy that error soon enough. A quick absolute-zero freeze-over will put him "on ice."**_

_You can't handle something that cold without garnering attention before it's frigid enough to kill him. The chill in the air will awaken the others, which could raise suspicions. No one should realize that WE were the ones who murdered James Kojiro._

_**Okay, fine, let's just slash the whole lot of them and be done with it. You happy?**_

_NO! The girl vermin is still as good as ours. It's the male that troubles me. His aura smells... troubled. Complex. A strange chiaroscuro that I've never sensed before. It's as if a part of his heart is being held back on purpose by some higher Power... like Something or Someone WANTS him in this place, at this time, and not for OUR purposes._

_**But chiaroscuro is good, right? Hypocrisy is our most valuable asset in charming vermin.**_

_D—m it, Ice Queen, his "chiaroscuro" could lead him to the Enemy. And we don't want THAT, do we? Not when all our Absol have pointed to THIS team as the one to intercept the Chosen One on his fateful journey. If our Master is to create his new, perfect universe, one without those wretched vermin creatures called mankind, he must first get rid of whatever would stand in his way. Including HIM._

_**Which "HIM" are you referring to?**_

_What other "HIM" is there? The Enemy._

_**Now you're asking for trouble. You don't speak blithely of THAT "Him."**_

_I'll say what I please, Ice Queen. My fire could melt you!_

_**Then why don't you go incinerate that d—m Carnivine you're so worried about? Why aren't you so HOT about that? Or are you afraid of taking physical form? I'M certainly not, even if it does get me a little wet at times. Phssst. I didn't even have to revert to my spirit form; I just froze myself a life-preserver-shaped iceburg. Nothing wrong with that, is there?**_

_Perhaps you don't understand. If we reveal ourselves, physically OR otherwise, he'll get paranoid. And fear could well turn him to the Enemy for protection._

_**Well, I'm not waiting any longer. The vermin is mine by right; I'll gut him alive one way or another. None of their Pokemon are strong against a Sneasel.**_

_Not even the Staryu that nearly drowned you?_

_**Oh-HO! So THAT'S what has you worried! The big, bad Hellhound is scared of a crummy jewel-bearing starfish wetting his whistler! FINE. I'll show you just how deadly I can be.**_

_Wait, what's that sound?_

_**What's what – **_

"_BEGONE, FALSE ONES! IN ELIAUN'S NAME!"_

_**ARRGH! It's a GALLADE! Hellhound, HELP ME!**_

_Not a chance, Ice Queen! If you're so confident in your own abilities, save yourself! I'm outta here!_

_**The light! STOP THAT LIGHT!**_

…

…

…

…

…

…

"Man, whadda oid dream I had las' noight," Meowth commented as he nonchalantly watched Jessie and James pick up camp. Strangely enough, they seemed to be avoiding each other. "Sounded loike two twoips fightin wid each udda over killin' somethin'."

"We weren't arguing over killing anything!" James cut in, certain that Meowth was referring to his "disagreement" with Jessie.

"Nope, wairn't you twose. Dey wuz speakin' Poke-talk. Dem signals 'tween minds dat we share while we're all yappin' our names ta throw ya human-types off track. Not dat yo' hoid it from Me-owth, mind ya. Dat's a trade secret."

"Wait, two Pokemon were arguing over killing something right by our camp, and you SLEPT THROUGH IT?"

"It wuz jus' a dream, Jimmy! Nuddin' real 'bout it!"

"What about the Pokemon Dream World?" asked Jessie, curious. She'd had an odd feeling that night after James had finally gone to sleep, a feeling like she'd felt just before she'd been captured by a "client" as a child and forced into a house of ill repute with other young unfortunates. The proprietors had promptly perished under mysterious circumstances, although rumor had it that there might have been a ninja involved. A really short ninja.

Jessie had enjoyed being that ninja.

Meowth shrugged. "Dreams ain't real, Jess. Shoirly yo' know dat by now." Meowth looked at James. "HIM, on de odda han'..."

James looked as if he felt he should say something, but he didn't. He couldn't. Who would believe him?

But under his breath, James muttered two words to himself: "False Ones."

Words that Meowth heard quite easily.

"Foise 'Uns? Whadd're dose?"

"Nothing, nothing," James lied, trying not to look as scared out of his socks as he actually was. "Dreams aren't real, ha ha ha, so let's just go cross that-"

His next words abruptly stuck in his throat and attempted to force their way back down his trachea and into his lungs, so much so that Jessie almost had to give him a Heimlich Maneuver, which would have probably resulted in Meowth blowing the whistle on her "violent" behavior to their superiors. And that wouldn't have been fun, although in retrospect, what actually happened to Jessie, James, and Meowth that day could not possibly by any sense of the imagination be described as "fun" either. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

"Well, spit it out!" Jessie yelled at her partner. James gulped, snapping back to reality and staring at exactly the same thing he had been about to speak of. The thing that looked even more entirely unstable than James himself felt upon looking at it.

"That BRIDGE..."

"That BRIDGE" just so happened to be looming roughly a million feet above a raging river of death, or at least that was how it appeared to James. In truth, it was probably just two hundred feet or so, but that was still more than James cared to bet his life on.

Coincidentally (or not so much, as both male beings together only had all the machismo of a terrified Smoochum), Meowth spoke James' thoughts aloud for him. "Now how're we gonna cross dat ding widdout breakin' our oin necks?"

That was a very good question, and James wished he had a very good answer. Unfortunately, since he was technically the only one of the trio that had actually crossed it by foot, everyone was looking at HIM, which meant that he was going to have trouble hiding the fact that he had already wet himself in fear. At least if the bridge broke and he fell in the water, it'd hide that little embarrassment. But even if it did, there was always the small matter of how painful the landing would be, assuming he didn't die instantly.

Gee, THAT was a pleasant thought. Instant eradication. Oh, well, there had to be a positive side, right? At least he'd never have to marry Jessiebelle. But if he wound up in Hell, he'd be in trouble, because Jessiebelle was sure to show up there sooner or later.

It didn't help James' feelings one bit when Jessie, ever the showoff, tried to ninja-flip across the wooden bridge, lost her footing, and wound up breaking half a board off the bottom and having to scramble for safety across the ropes, much to Meowth's disproportionate and completely ill-founded amusement. At least until it saw the look on Jessie's face when she finally reached solid ground and realized that someone with a tail and whiskers was laughing at her.

She glared Pin Missles at Meowth. "Oh, laugh at me from over THERE, will you? Fine then, fuzzy-butt! YOU cross it!"

Meowth stared at the still-shaking bridge and began shaking himself, and this time, it wasn't from laughter. Suddenly all the humor had left the situation like a Durant's insides after a run-in with a Heatmor's breath. "Uh... Jessie... Oi'm kinda alloigic t' death."

"Oh, PLEASE. You're a kriffin' CAT POKEMON. Can't you land on your feet?"

"In da drink? I HATE geddin' dese feet wet!"

"Well, do you want to stay there forever looking like a moron, or are you going to do your JOB and supervise us?"

"Howze about youse just stan' dere an' I'll supahvize ya both from way over here?"

James soon realized that if anyone was going to get Meowth across the bridge, it would have to be him. He also realized that the longer he thought about it, the harder it would be to actually do it. The problem was that he couldn't exactly get himself to do it without thinking about it."A-a-all right, Meowthster," he said, using Jessie's nickname for the feline Pokemon. "J-just get on my shoulders a-a-and we'll d-do this..."

Meowth's sensitive feline ears couldn't help but catch James whispering to himself, "I hope, I hope, I hope..."

Regardless, Meowth still climbed up James' arm and took a position riding Grumpig-back on the male Trainer. Bracing himself for what was to come, James froze in place, trying and failing to find the will to set foot on the dilapidated structure. It was only after Meowth dug its hind claws into James' shoulders like spurs and yelled, "Gee up, Silver!" that James took off in a swift run across the unsturdy bridge, just as he had before when Jessie had been chasing him in her rage.

Except that time, there hadn't been half a board missing from the middle of the bridge from where Jessie had been careless.

A half board that James unfortunately failed to take into account as he sprinted across the bridge with his eyes shut tight in fear.

And then the world gave out from beneath him.

The wooden planks seemed to explode around James and Meowth (that was how Meowth described it afterward, although some said he had to be exaggerating), and James suddenly plunged downward, the rush of wind in his ears drowned out by the sound of Meowth screaming in terror. Acting faster than he could think as his eyes snapped open, he grabbed the closest things he could see in his blurry vision – Meowth's tail and left hind paw. Meowth, in turn, clung desperately to the frayed end of one half of what had been a rope from the bridge, gripping it with his teeth and both sets of foreclaws as the bridge half's center of gravity – James and Meowth – naturally dropped as low as possible, straining the ropes and sending James and Meowth crashing into the face of the cliff on Jessie's side, stunning them both.

Meowth was saved by his own claws, two of which had caught tight in the ropes and kept him hanging long enough for him to come to his senses and get his grip back. Thankfully, that only took all of two seconds; a Pokemon could take a lot more damage without flinching than a human could.

Say, a human like James.

Once again, the world gave way from beneath him as his hands went slack, releasing Meowth's limbs. He heard Jessie's scream of horror, Meowth's cries for him to "come back," as if he could fly like a Pidgeot – then he hit the water hard, as if it were a solid surface, swiftly sinking into both the river rapids, and a merciful unconsciousness.

The False Ones had struck their blow.


	8. A Long Way Down

**A/N: I'm getting a new feel for Carnavalin's lopsided relationship with James. Remembering how "she" originally learned Vine Whip in the Diamond/Pearl series to save James and Mime Jr. from death has given me the feel that she'd "go through fire and water" to keep her "family" safe... and in this story, that includes "safe from Jessie." Look out, Musashi; a Carnivine never forgets. That's quite an interesting interplay I've created: Carnavalin sort of realizes she'll likely never have James to herself (him being human and all), but she sure doesn't trust Jessie with him after the Sleeping Bag Incident.**

**Episode 001 pt. 8: A Long Way Down**

Meowth froze in terror. It was the first day of his new job, and already he'd lost one of his charges to a fate worse than death (from a feline perspective; water was so WET!). Not to mention that he himself was hanging by a claw from an obviously unstable bridge fragment and that it was anyone's guess as to whether he could climb up to safety before the rest of what had once been the bridge fell to pieces on him.

And it didn't help matters when Jessie, Meowth's other charge, gave a loud cry and purposely plummeted towards the water where James had fallen.

Meowth's first thought was that Jessie had turned suicidal over losing her partner, but that proved not to be the case; halfway through her descent, Jessie released her Staryu, Kojiro, who had mostly regrown its lost limbs from the day before. Not that Meowth could tell; "Jiro" was spinning far too rapidly and shooting out a swift stream of water from the mouth on the underside of its core, catching Jessie in her descent and controlling her fall so that she hit the water swiftly yet safely. Jiro's own descent seemed controlled by some sort of levitation ability, and it hovered in midair as it watched its trainer's descent from its single crystal eye.

Then, without provocation, the Staryu sent a similar blast of water at Meowth, trapping the terrified feline in a whirlpool that sucked him down to Jessie and Jiro, the latter of which caught Meowth neatly on its back. Spluttering mad, Meowth was about to say some very rude words to Jessie, but one cold glare from those sapphire eyes told him that now was the time for action, not insults. She didn't really need to say it, but she said it anyway: "Hang tight, fuzz-butt! We're going to rescue James!"

Meowth didn't argue. He couldn't, not with Jiro spinning across the waves with Meowth on its back, causing the cat Pokemon to have a sudden attack of projectile vomiting. Unable to hold on, Meowth was accidentally flung downstream, plunging into the depths where James had sunk.

The good news was that Meowth did find James there. The bad news was that something else had found James first.

Something had found James first, and it was a Tentacruel. A whopping big Tentacruel, too, with what seemed to Meowth like all eighty of its tentacles wrapped around James' unconscious body, dragging and keeping him under the waves of the rushing river with the transparent intent to devour him. Unfortunately, Meowth's guess as to the number of tentacles used was incorrect; the Gangster of the Sea had enough tentacles free to snare the Scratch Cat Pokemon as well, dragging him down to join his unfortunate charge. In fact, as any marine Poke-ologist knows, a full-grown Tentacruel can hold eighty prey at once, one in each of its tentacles, all to consume at its leisure. Although that would have made it considerably harder for it to swim.

Then, by chance or by design, _something_ barely seen brushed against James' Poke-belt, unleashing Carnavalin.

That _something_ just might have been shaped like a Gallade, although Meowth later admitted that Gallade, from what he'd seen of them, didn't make a habit of phasing in and out of existence within half-seconds, and certainly stuck around longer than that if someone was actually in trouble. So the jury was still out on that one.

What mattered was that the Tentacruel was now officially in just as much trouble as James and Meowth were, because a woman scorned has the fury of a False One. True, the Grass-on-Water attack combination was negated by Tentacruel's secondary type (Poison), but that didn't matter to Valin; what mattered was that some shameless hussy was hugging HER main squeeze, and she wasn't about to take THAT lying down.

It didn't help the Tentacruel when Valin found out it was planning on eating him, either.

Thankfully, the horrible creature had been stunned by the light from Valin's Poke-ball as she'd emerged, giving Valin the advantage. By the time Jessie and Jiro had caught up with them, Valin had drained all the fight out of the wild Tentacruel, as well as most of the life. But a still-living Tentacruel never lets go of its prey until it has utterly consumed it, leaving Jessie and Valin with no real choice but to finish the job.

Meowth had never before that day seen a human woman rip a living Tentacruel in two with her bare hands, and he sincerely hoped he never had to see it again. Although, technically, Jessie HAD been wearing gloves, which was probably the only reason she didn't have big red welts on her hands from the acid inside the once-living package of polyps. And it most certainly was dead, every last bit of it. Tentacruel were symbiotic Pokemon built out of hundreds of smaller living creatures, and at the rate Jessie and Valin flew at them, not one single tentacle of that Tentacruel survived that ordeal.

On the plus side, he knew what they were doing for lunch that day.

On the minus side, he didn't know if James would live to taste it.

With James' bloodthirsty foe reduced to sushi, Jessie and Valin pulled James out of the water with Meowth and Jiro's help. Seeing the severed tentacles still wrapped around her partner – her FRIEND – who still lay unconscious and possibly dying – almost sent Jessie into hysteria; thankfully, part of her ninja training as a young girl (younger than you might think for a ninja; indoctrination begins at home, and it prefers to start early) involved plenty of emergency medical assistance. After all, a six-year-old would-be ninja is bound to get herself into her fair share of scrapes, so Jessie had naturally been trained to get out of them. It had even led her to (shortly after the brothel incident had led her to leave her questionable occupation for her own safety) apply at a Pokemon nurse's school.

The first nursing school she'd dropped by was actually for _Pokemon_ that wanted to be nurses, but she hadn't had the chance to check out any others, because the teachers had figured out pretty quickly from her disheveled and anorexic appearance that Jessie didn't have anyone to look after her. BAM. That had been her one-way ticket into a foster care family – Matthews was the family name – that could barely afford to feed its own _biological_ children.

How THAT was supposed to work out, Jessie hadn't had the slightest idea, but it goes without saying that it didn't.

Still, it wasn't entirely a bad thing, at least in the bigger scheme of things; after Jessie's failure to pass nursing school, the Matthews family sent her to a more rounded-out schooling at Pokemon Technical, where she first met James. She'd still practiced nursing at Pokemon Tech, though; mainly on James, who was natural bully bait. (She'd also been able to hone her ninja skills by dropping bullies non-lethally without leaving a trace of evidence to incriminate herself to the teachers, except that she'd bragged about it to James afterward, who'd promptly alerted the principal like a two-timing Raticate because he had been certain that had meant that Jessie had been the one secretly stealing his lunch.)

James, who was going to DIE if she didn't do something about it.

The first thing to do was to remove the drying-out tentacles, of course, but that proved easier said than done, and not just because of their tight grip; when she brought out a good-sized knife from her pocket with purely the intention to slice apart the tentacles, Valin just about had a seizure.

Pulling a knife on her trainer did NOT sit well with that Pokemon, especially after Jessie's history with throwing James into the river that first time. And Valin, who hadn't seen how James fell in THIS time, had good reason to suspect that Jessie had done it, and that Jessie intended the worst. Which was why Carnavalin went completely berserk on Jessie.

It was a brutal but short fight; it would have been even more brutal if Valin hadn't yanked the knife out of Jessie's hands before forcibly seizing the human in her vines. Jessie, too enraged to keep her head under the situation, could do nothing but scream bloody murder as Valin shed the vines she'd bound her human foe in, leaving Jessie trapped in a tight cocoon of plant material like a Swadloon in Unova's wintertime. Cursing like a shipload of drunken sailors, Jessie struggled in vain against her bonds, calling the Carnivine several very nasty names (none of which were printable and one of which James would have mistaken for a Legendary Bug-type Pokemon if he had been conscious) over and over and over again.

It had all happened too quickly for Meowth to react in time. "Oi! Can dah infightin', goils! We gotta save Jimmy!" he yelled futilely.

Jiro took a more logical approach; rushing at James, the Staryu used its water powers on James to force the fluid from his lungs, simultaneously snapping the poor trainer back into consciousness.

And that consciousness hurt.

When she heard the scream, Valin whirled around to see who else had dared attack her trainer under her watch. She was about to bite Jiro into a thousand pieces, but James cried out something that might have been meant as a command in English, but came out more like the scream of a base animal that had just survived being run over by a cement truck and most dearly wished it hadn't.

Disoriented and weak from the Tentacruel's poison, and with several bones broken in various places he couldn't identify, James had no idea what was going on, where he was, or even how he had gotten there. Trying desperately to stand, James instead collapsed even more painfully into a bloodied heap, then cry out in agony. While no human being would never have understood the precise meaning of James' screams, the Pokemon knew enough: James was in terrible pain, and if nothing was done about it, his pain might end the hard way. The permanent way.

None of them wanted THAT, except possibly James himself at that precise moment in time.

Meowth thought he'd be first to reach James aside from Jiro, but fear for James' life led wings to Valin's vines. Jessie's continued enraged cries for her freedom fell upon deaf ears as the three Pokemon, now united, huddled around the injured James in fear for his life. Hot Pokemon tears fell upon James' shuddering body, gleaming in the sunlight with what seemed like a life of their own.

Glowdrops. The tears of a Pokemon. Aura-infused, mineral-rich fluid that is said to work miracles. No one yet has learned how to harness the power of these tears, as even the Pokemon that shed them cannot fully control their flow. Tears alone could not be relied on to save their friend, but none of the Pokemon knew what else could. Only Jessie knew...

..and she was still tied up in vines, and loudly advertising that fact with rather obscene overtones.

Meowth had to make _much_ debate in Poke-speak to Valin while _safely_ cutting James free from the tentacles with his claws, but once he'd convinced Valin that he would personally take responsibility for any damage Jessie did to James (a promise he wasn't happy making and that he hoped he'd never have to keep), the cat Pokemon rushed to Jessie's side as quickly as possible and Fury-Swiped her free as well.

"Don't move James!" Jessie yelled at Valin, who was trying to make her trainer more comfortable by weaving him a bed of vines. "You'll hurt him worse. Trust me on this!" That was one of the first things she'd learned in nursing school: improperly moving an injured creature could lead to even worse injuries.

Valin gave Jessie a dirty look, then promptly ignored her warnings. She still remembered that the LAST time James had nearly drowned in a river, it was because Jessie had thrown him into it. She also knew enough about human behavior to determine the reason Jessie had done it in the first place. No doubt she firmly believed that Jessie had had a hand in causing James' current situation, and Valin did not intend to forgive her for it.

If saving her dearly beloved meant letting a potential rival do it for her, she didn't have much of a choice. For James' own sake, at least. But if that human woman took _one_ _step_ towards compromising James, Valin vowed, soon there'd be absolutely nothing left of her worth compromising anything with. She could take on Jessie's Staryu, she knew; Grass-on-Water was still as effective as always.

Valin liked to think that she didn't mean real harm to any innocent being, human or Pokemon, but Jessie was far from innocent, she knew that much. And she'd never forgotten it. Jessie was forced to work her medical magic under a pair of piecing, unforgiving Carnivine eyes.

If anything happened to James under her watch, there'd be more than one human close to death that day. Carnavalin would most certainly see to THAT.


	9. Casualties

**A/N: I told you guys I'd use Tessa, didn't I? And my character Luthor makes an appearance, but under a different name – when I'd created Luthor, the official anime character Dr. Zygor didn't exist, so since both of them are associated with the TRio in their respective fan works, I've decided to merge the characters (although, to be honest, I'm not sure if Zygor's personality would match up with my Luthor's, assuming Zygor actually HAS a personality. I don't really watch the anime all that often at all, and I definitely don't watch Black & White because they took away everything I loved about Team Rocket in the first place. That, and didn't have those episodes streaming last time I checked.)**

**There's also another surprise encounter (although, for those who know the episode this story is built off of, you're probably wondering why they didn't show up earlier... and I can say no more. Smirk.)**

Part 9: Casualties

TEAM ROCKET ACADEMY – MEDICAL WARD

"It appears that the emergency surgery was successful. The patient should awaken in about half an hour."

Those were two sentences that Jessie had never wanted to hear before James fell off the (expletive deleted) bridge, but now that she had heard them, they were music to her ears. Despite the doctor's warning for her to take it slow for the patient, she rushed into James' recovery room like a Charmeleon fleeing a rainstorm, with Meowth close behind her.

James looked and breathed like a perfect angel when he was sleeping, but Jessie earnestly hoped he wasn't about to become one. His body was almost completely covered in bandages – even his head was wrapped in gauze, showing only his face and that one lock of hair that no hairdresser on Pokearth had ever been able to keep out of his eyes.

"James, are you all right?" Jessie shouted. "SPEAK to me!" (While he didn't wake up, she could have sworn she saw him flinch at her voice.)

Meowth leapt nimbly onto the bedside table, crouching on all fours and giving James a good long study. "He's breathin', all roight. Sounds mo' stable dan da Tentacruel, a' least. Not much wois dan a fainted Poisian." He noticed a bag of fluids hanging from a metal stand on the other side of James' bed. "Gimme dat bottle dere, and Oi'll wake 'im up real quick!"

Jessie grabbed Meowth swiftly and fiercely. "That's his IV, you moron! Don't even THINK of puncturing it, or I'll have YOU hooked up to one!" she yelled. "He needs that!"

"Excuse me, is this the right room?" said an unfamiliar female voice. "I'm looking for James... oh, Arceus." A young teenager with long, slightly curly, seafoam-green hair and wide eyes had stuck her head through the open door and was gaping at the sight of James' condition, completely ignoring Jessie and Meowth's scuffle. "Please tell me this isn't James Kojiro lying in that hospital bed!"

Jessie and Meowth both instantly froze, turning their eyes towards the newcomer. She shyly waved at the pair of well-wishers. "Um, I'm Tessa Hyslop, James' old partner. And you are?"

"Who am _**I**_, you ask?" Jessie smirked, tossing Meowth aside like a bad apple. "I'm Jessie Musashi, ninja princess, soon-to-be top Rocket in this organization, and-" She broke down suddenly, remembering the circumstances. All her bravado evaporated like a Cryogonal in a lit furnace. "Oh, who am I kidding? You're not here to see me at _all_, are you?" she sobbed. "Yes... yes, I'm afraid that's James in that bed, and before you ask, I didn't do it!"

Tessa's jaw dropped, James' precarious condition temporarily forgotten. "Jessie Musashi? You mean... THE Jessie Musashi? The Ninja Princess? The one that took down that whorehouse kingpin all by herself?"

Meowth picked himself out of a trash can, shaking scrap paper out of his fur. "Yecch, not chewin' gum in moi tail-foir again. Waiddaminit, whad's all dis about?"

Jessie's face looked like a Deerling trapped in headlights. Should she choose to bask in the spotlight she'd always dreamed of, or turn this Tessa's attention back to the wounded warrior? Then suddenly Tessa's tone changed. "Wait a minute... didn't James once date you or something? Are you the one who threw him in the – oh, but you already said you didn't; what am I saying?" She continued to blather on like an obsessed fangirl, not noticing the deeper and deeper shades of red that Jessie's face was turning.

Things had gone from awkward to humiliating. "Shut up! I don't have any idea what you're talking about!" Jessie lied. "I was his partner on the field when he was reassigned. He fell off a collapsing bridge into the water and almost got eaten by an enormous Tentacruel, and I couldn't do anything about it!" (This technically wasn't true – she'd certainly done something about the Tentacruel – but she was so upset that she couldn't even remember things straight.) "Don't talk to me like I'm some kind of legend, Tessy. I'm a failure, that's what I am!"

While Tessa was staring in shock at her idol, a low groan came from the hospital bed.

A low groan, and then a loud yell.

"BROKEN?" James screamed, clearly coming both out of a nightmare and into consciousness. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, BRO..." He quickly became aware of his surroundings and the fact that there were two teenage girls he knew in the room, both staring at him as if he was insane, which was a possibility that he most certainly couldn't deny outright. "Um... yeah, you two? Forget I said anything. I'm crazy." James paused, possibly recalling something he didn't want to remember. "Yeah, that's it, I must be crazy. Everyone says I am anyway."

"You just had a nightmare, didn't you?" Tessa asked, leaning in closer to James. Jessie rudely shoved her out of the way and began examining James' condition closely. "That doesn't mean you're crazy, it just means you're alive."

"No, you moron, you're not supposed to be able to HAVE nightmares while you're put under," Jessie insisted. "James must have had an out-of-body experience. Is that it?"

James shuddered. "I hope not! What with the cackling Sneasel and the bloody lake and the red chains and..." He shuddered, shaking his many bandages. "Don't ask me about it. Period! It never happened. What kinds of berries do you PUT in those home remedies, anyway?"

Jessie began to wonder if James had ever been psychologically tested for juvenile dementia. "Are you blaming ME for your little hallucinations? It's YOUR fault you even had to CROSS that stupid bridge, let alone fall off it! And now you're claiming I cured you wrong?"

James examined his surroundings with his eyes. He seemed to relax a little. "Well, whatever you did to me, I'm officially impressed. When did you get this room built, anyway? Or am I still hallucinating?"

Jessie almost slapped James right there on his bandaged forehead. Almost.

Suddenly, all the post-surgery pain James had been oblivious to in his shock from awakening hit him all at once, and he gave a small groan and fell back into the tortured delusions of his subconscious.

His subconscious?

Or something more?

Whatever it was, Jessie could tell that his behavior was NOT normal. Even for James, to whom "normal" was merely a Pokemon type and never a human one.

Jessie exited the room in a daze, barely acknowledging Tessa and Meowth's presences. In fact, she almost ran right into the head surgeon, a slightly intimidating Luxray morph with many grey streaks in his mane and a bushy gray mustache. "Hey, why don't you watch where you're going?!" she snapped before rudely shoving the doctor out of the way and running off to parts unknown, presumably going to her dorm to have a good cry or something.

As Meowth dashed after Jessie (he couldn't go all that fast on only two of his short little legs, so he four-footed it), Tessa turned to the doctor himself. "So, how long will it take James to recover?"

"Unfortunately, Rocket-Dan's stock of potions and revive crystals is severely underfunded," the surgeon replied morosely. "This organization seems to care more about _causing_ damage than healing it. With that in mind, he's expected to recover within a week or so if nothing disastrous happens. But let me remind you," he said sternly, "this is Rocket-Dan, so something disastrous IS bound to eventually happen. Let us hope it doesn't happen until our poor dear James is ready for it."

Tessa looked back through the doorway at James, who was moaning in his sleep at some invisible or imagined apparition. "I'd say that the something disastrous already happened before James was ready for it."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Well, just take good care of him, Dr. Zager."

"Thank you. I will."

Tessa nodded and rushed down the hallway, determined to find Jessie. Although, to be perfectly honest, she wasn't entirely sure if she should or not.

And then it turned out that someone else had beaten her to it.

Jessie was backed into a corner, surrounded by two other agents-in-training, a male and a female of about Jessie's own age of fifteen. Both wore identical blue trainee uniforms with the familiar "R" insignia firmly planted on their chests, but the boy had straight, ear-length, bright green hair, while the female was a blonde with two notably long braids that even rivaled Jessie's redheaded splendor. Neither looked at all friendly to Jessie, and although they hadn't made a move to actually threaten her, Jessie's body language and tense expression clearly showed that she was fully expecting them to do so.

"CASSIDY," Jessie hissed. And Tessa had the feeling that she was about to see the Ninja Princess in action, one way or the other, right before her eyes that very day.


	10. The Mighty and Magnificent Moron

**A/N: Thanks for the review, Rebecca. As to why I use Rocket-Dan instead of Team Rocket, the original purpose was because I thought it sounded cooler, but later on I worked in the acronym shown in chapter 3: **_Researching, Obtaining, Creating, Keeping, Enforcing, and Transforming a Deadly Animal Nation. _**Whether this will extend to other villainous teams... well, I've been thinking about that a bit more, and I think it would sound a bit ridiculous if every single team had -Dan tacked onto the end of their names, so I don't think I'll go that way. So, what do the rest of you think? Please read and review!**

Part 10: The Mighty and Magnificent Moron

Dr. Luthor Zygor listened carefully down the hall with his Luxray-like ears, hoping that there wouldn't be another altercation between Jessie and Cassidy. Cassidy, at least, was PRETENDING to be civil; Jessie wasn't extending her the same courtesy in any way whatsoever. Tessa and Meowth were standing on either side of Jessie, either ready to defend her or simply wanting to watch her punch the crap out of Cassidy. Butch was quiet, but from what Zygor could see, he appeared to be taking an abnormal interest in Jessie's bustline. Typical male. Zygor quickly looked away; being gifted with a Luxray's x-ray vision was both a blessing and a curse, and he honestly couldn't tell which one applied when underage females were in the equation.

He quickly reminded himself, before he was tempted to look back, that Jessie could probably slaughter him anyway. He'd read her file, and that girl was one step away from being locked up in either maximum security or the loony bin. More likely both.

Perhaps James would be better off dying quietly of surgical complications, but Zygor wasn't suicidal enough to even consider that option if Jessie was involved. No, this case was going to need a different brand of hocus-pocus to ensure Kojiro's good health.

Or, more accurately, Hocus Pokerus.

Hocus Pokerus was a fourteen-year-old Abra morph that, oddly enough, also resembled a Jynx, although she didn't have any Jynx genes – she simply liked to grow her blonde hair out long and wear red opera-style dresses to keep people guessing. She was also innately skilled at Pokemon magic, including a certain brand of Shuckle-style potion-making which she used to great effect. All Zygor had to do was send a thought her way, and presto-chango, Hocus Pokerus would come teleporting in without fail. Unless, of course, she was already busy with some other Rocket member who had thought of her first.

It was amazing that Hocus ever got any time to herself, but occasionally she managed it.

And here she was, with one shoe off and the other shoe in her hands, indicating that she'd been planning on going somewhere before she was requested. Kind of odd that she wore shoes at all, really; it wasn't as if she needed to walk a good distance to get places, and Abra feet didn't really fit well in high heels. Hocus gave Zygor an annoyed look and asked, "Aren't there any OTHER Rocket-Dan agents that know how to use Teleport?"

"There's a Ralts morph named Willow under the Masked Marauder's command, but..." Zygor stammered, clearly ill at ease with the situation. Of COURSE Hocus knew this was an emergency if she'd read his mind, but clearly she didn't care. Must have been that week of the month for her or something, but he didn't intend on asking, and he knew she'd Psybeam him if he used his x-ray vision to check.

"Fine; I'll go bug HIM then," Hocus pouted before teleporting away again.

Zygor couldn't believe it. While he was commonly viewed as one of the brightest minds ever to come out of Rocket-Dan (and not just because his hair glowed in the dark), he still couldn't figure out anyone with two X chromosomes. Not even his own wife and daughter, come to think of it.

As he waited, he went back to watching the trainees with renewed interest.

* * *

"So, you put yet ANOTHER partner in the hospital," Cassidy deadpanned. "What number is he, unlucky thirteen?"

"I did NOT put all thirteen of my partners in the hospital!" Jessie snapped. "Ask Junpei if you don't believe me!"

"Junpei was sent to the labs for being thicker than a Marowak's club," Cassidy shot back. "As will you and your retarded partner number thirteen, sooner or later. If he even lives that long."

"They'll probably just harvest his organs," Butch put in helpfully. "It's much more cost-effective."

Jessie's rage was building. "James is NOT retarded, they are NOT going to harvest his organs – and so help me, I will harvest YOUR organs if you EVER say a single word against him like that again! He's kind, thoughtful, nicer than you ever were or ever will be-"

"Which is precisely why he's going to die," Cassidy taunted. "No KIND, THOUGHTFUL person ever came out of Rocket-Dan training alive. I can't believe they ever even recruited him in the first place."

Butch piped up, "I heard that when they found him, he had frostbite and a broken spine from trying to take on a wild Articuno while wearing a Moltres suit. Dumbest guy alive!"

Jessie was surprised, but hardly disbelieving; James WOULD be dumb enough to do that if he felt he had to. "Moltres suit?" was all she could reply.

Cassidy nodded. "Oh, didn't you hear? James was the costumed greeter at Cinnabar Island Resort, and waaaaay too much of an over-actor, if you ask me." (Jessie fully believed this.) "Anyhow, one day several months ago an angry Articuno showed up and started flash-freezing everybody in sight, and your sweet little Jamie apparently decided to go on the offensive. He climbed a building, flapped his wings, squawked like a Moltres, and tried to jump on top of Articuno in a fierce battling frenzy." Cassidy shrugged. "The bird threw him off from five thousand feet in the air and froze him solid just after he crashed into a snowdrift. Surprising he ever survived at all."

Jessie wasn't sure if this made James a heck of a lot more masculine or just plain dumb. Probably both.

"Anyway," Cassidy went on, turning to leave the conversation, "once he croaks, I'd stay away from the cafeteria meatloaf if I were you. They're trying to cut corners on their food budget. Seems Rapidash meat is just too expensive nowadays."

And that was the precise moment when Jessie lunged and attempted to beat the life out of Cassidy.

* * *

In the end, the combined efforts of Butch, Tessa, and Meowth managed to pry the two rivals apart with only mild injuries before Dr. Zygor, who had of course been watching with his X-ray vision, ever reached them. Jessie and Cassidy got sent to separate trainee detention chambers for a week, which ironically gave James more time to heal before the next mission. Dr. Zygor, caught up in the confusion of the moment, never did find out if Willow ever reached James, but James' healing did seem to speed along much smoother in the days after the incident.

With Butch's training with Cassidy otherwise suspended, he was temporarily paired off with Tessa, and they actually hit it off pretty well, although not in the romantic sense. Once Cassidy was out of solitary confinement, Butch's partnership with Tessa was broken off to reunite him with Cassidy, and Tessa was assigned onto a support team with a young man named Mondo.

And Jessie never, ever, stopped hating Cassidy.

TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
